


O what would not I do to obtain his soul

by DaScribbla



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Bottom Thor (Marvel), Developing Relationship, F/M, Guilt, M/M, Pre-Thor (2011), Pseudo-Incest, Sexual Tension, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-15
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-02-02 16:56:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12730590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaScribbla/pseuds/DaScribbla
Summary: Thor and Loki haven't exchanged a kind word in months. The reason isn't quite what one would think.





	O what would not I do to obtain his soul

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shakespeareishq](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespeareishq/gifts).



I.

It started with anger, of course. When you raise a boy a certain way, the only way he can express his own fear is through anger. The snapping of teeth, wolf-like and spiteful, echoed around the court and gave pause to those privileged enough to have intimate dealings with the family. Gone were the boys who had been inseparable in their youth, and in their places were two young men who wanted nothing to do with each other. When one entered a room, the other immediately rose to leave it. On the rare occasion that they could inhabit the same space for any length of time, they would inevitably fall to bickering like the children they had been, or else the room would be doused in a silence as cold as ice water. It was hard to say which their parents preferred: Odin was glad of the quiet, but Frigga watched their sons pointedly ignore each other and felt something like dread slip into her stomach. 

“What’s gotten into you two?” she asked Loki one afternoon after he had appeared in her chambers, wearing the subtle, sullen pout that had gradually replaced the tantrums he had outgrown. He shrugged with one shoulder where he lay with his head in her lap, letting her stroke his hair. Despite the façade of aloofness that he built up, he was always the more affectionate son, always wanting to be touched, still seeking her hand sometimes when nobody was watching. “You used to be so good to each other and now you can’t even say good morning.”

He shrugged again and didn’t look at her. 

She sighed. “You’re always so perceptive,” she said, “about everyone except yourself.” It was an old joke.

 

Per expectation, Thor was the more demonstrative one, and, perhaps contrary to expectation, he was also the more perspicacious. Where Loki was snappish and cruel—that part of his personality hadn’t vanished from childhood either—Thor was blunt and threw things. In private, he drank more and did _not_ consider the source of his anger. He knew what it was. He refused to think about it. Perhaps, by ignoring it, he could kill it altogether.

That morning, Loki had seen him in the doorway of the library and risen, gathered up his books, and blown past him with a sigh of exasperation at being forced to move location _yet again._

“Nobody’s making you go,” Thor had said right as he crossed the threshold.

“If I thought that I was being _made_ to go,” Loki said without turning around, “I assure you I would stay right where I was.”

Thor had watched his back recede down the corridor for nearly ten seconds before catching himself. He left the library. There was no longer anything there that he wanted.

Once—just once—he allowed himself the luxury of slipping into Loki’s chambers. Popular opinion viewed Loki as the more organized of the two, but that assumption died the moment anyone saw how he lived; in reality, Loki was as disordered as Thor was. His bed, just visible in the next room, was never made, and every available surface was littered with books, quills, plants, maps. Thor stood in the middle of the chaos and breathed in the scents. Dust, mostly. But also the purple smell of the glossy-petalled flowers that grew on the tall doors that led out onto the balcony, and underneath the dust and the flowers, the musk that he knew belonged to the rooms’ occupant. 

Slowly, as though too heavy a footfall would break the stillness, he walked into the next room where Loki slept. 

The bedclothes were tangled, the various coverlets cascading off one corner of the bed into a heap on the floor. Furs, silks. He didn’t like rough fabrics. Just smoothness. Thor brushed the backs of his fingers over one pillow and immediately jerked back as if burned. It felt too intimate. Guiltily, he glanced up at where the mirror hung on the wall, but instead of seeing his reflection, there was nothing but black. Loki had draped a cloak over it. Why would he do that?

The reality of what he was doing—invading a space that was supposed to be Loki’s refuge from the rest of the world—took hold. Thor left quickly. 

Back in his own chambers, he gritted his teeth and slid a hand into his trousers. He would rationalize it later, would try to pass it off as anything other than what it was. And even later, he would avoid his brother’s eye and lash out at him the moment he did anything that remotely merited an attack. 

If he hated him, then the other, even less acceptable feelings made no logical sense.

 

II. 

After anger, there was a sort of hysterical desperation that took hold of them. Loki found himself screaming at Thor one day for no real reason—he had disturbed him while he was trying to concentrate, or perhaps he had looked at him in a way that displeased him. Loki didn’t remember it now. All that really registered was the white-hot anger that had pooled in his stomach and made it impossible to breathe. 

It was a great failing of his that confrontation automatically triggered tears on his part. He blinked them away before Thor could seize upon them and give back as good as he had gotten and spun on his heel to leave—to go where? Anywhere. Anyplace his brother wasn’t. 

Thor caught his forearm and spun him back around to face him.

“I don’t think you had finished yet,” he said. 

“I think you got the gist.”

His grip on his forearm was hard to the point of pain. “I really didn’t.”

“I might have known the majority of it would fly over your head.”

Somehow, his grip tightened. It would leave bruises. Loki refused to give his brother the satisfaction of moving or crying out. “Really,” he added through gritted teeth, “aren’t you a little old for this sort of thing?”

Thor made no reply. Just looked at him in a manner that made Loki feel at once as furious as he had been before, and frightened.

“Let go of me,” he said quietly.

“What.” Thor’s voice was just as low and came hoarsely from his throat. “Don’t you love putting on a show? What part of this could you possibly hate?”

_“Let go of me.”_

“You were saying?” Thor prompted, not relenting in the least. “Go on. You have my undivided attention.”

Loki stepped closer and glared. They were exactly of a height; he held Thor’s gaze as Thor’s fingers dug further into his arm. His bones ached but there was something almost comforting about the agony. His heart pounded in his ribcage, sending blood rushing to his ears, flushing his skin. Thor was flushed, too. And something else aside from his pulse fluttered there, too, between his ribs. For a moment, he thought that the thing might have been hope, but that was ridiculous. There was nothing to hope for, aside from Thor possibly releasing him. 

Thor’s eyes flicked over the rest of him. 

He let him go with a huff of laughter that Loki knew was not meant out of any humor, but as a way to demean him. Loki let him walk to the door before a burst of magic from Loki’s hand froze him in place; Loki strode past, gave Thor’s glare a knife-like smile, and then immediately fled to his chambers the moment he was out of view and had undone the charm. 

Once the door to his chamber was closed, Loki slid down it until he sat on the floor, then pulled his sleeve back. His forearm was black with the marks of Thor’s fingers. 

He could have healed it with more magic, but he thought that the guilt that would consume his brother if he ever saw what he did to him would be far more beneficial.

 

Desperation. Thor found himself seeking out Fandral one evening because he knew he wouldn’t refuse him or expect anything more than friendship after the night was over. It wasn’t the first time, and Thor doubted very much that it would be the last—just as he doubted that it was the first time Loki and Sif had disappeared to their own dark corner somewhere. Probably her quarters.

Fandral fucked him in the way that he always did: with the laughter of two good friends sharing a bed, but also like he expected to find scratches on his back the next day. He wouldn’t be disappointed. 

Thor had never been to bed with Sif—and privately he suspected that she had only a passing interest in anything a man had to offer anyway—but, as he lay there, he found himself wondering what she and his brother did. Were they as wild and untroubled as he and Fandral were, or did they fuck like lovers? _Were_ they lovers, in that sense? Did they kiss? He and Fandral did, but it was a friendly thing, and only seldom on the lips. Fandral’s mouth liked to wander. He could see them rolling together on Sif’s bed, stopping with her beneath him, Loki dipping his head down to kiss her, as deeply as one might kiss a girl they had known all their lives, with tongues and wet want. He could see Sif pushing him backward and crawling over him, pulling him up by a fistful of his hair to kiss him again, as Thor might do were he to ever have the opportunity.

He came twice before Fandral was done and let his friend chalk it up to his own skill. 

 

In the morning, Loki rose early and began to dress. His clothes were strewn around Sif’s bed. Just as he’d done up his trousers, he heard a groan that told him she had woken. 

“You going?” she asked.

“Mm-hm.”

“If you’re going by the stables, you can tell them I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Mm-hm.” His shirt was under a chair. How had it gotten there? Behind him, the bed creaked. She was dressing with him, picking up her clothes from last night like he was. She still looked half-asleep; she could stay up past midnight, but mornings weren’t her strong suit. 

They finished dressing in silence, he taking far more time than she. 

The subject hung in the air like a hanged corpse. Loki wasn’t about to bring it up. As it was, he could only really look at her in his periphery.

Finally, she cleared her throat, and he knew with a sinking feeling that the moment was at its crisis.

“You don’t need to worry,” she said. “I’m not going to say anything.”

Not looking at her, he ran his fingers through his hair. “Thanks,” he said at last.

“Hey.” Trepidatiously, he glanced at her. She was seated on the edge of the bed, looking at him with some unreadable expression. He shifted from foot to foot like a child caught in wrongdoing—wasn’t that what he was?

“I’m not going to say anything,” she repeated. “But don’t keep running to me if all you’re going to do is say someone else’s name.”

He looked away, ashamed. 

“I’m not surprised,” she continued, “but I don’t want to know about it. I want deniability.”

He nodded his understanding. “I’m sorry.” He bent down to kiss her briefly, but she only tolerated it. 

As he was leaving, she called after him, “Be careful, Loki.”

He didn't turn back or acknowledge that he had heard her.

Desperation.

 

III.

Thor found him beneath one of the trees in their mother’s garden, for once without a book in hand. His head was tilted back against the trunk of the tree, eyes closed, and he might have looked peaceful were it not for the furrow in his brow. 

Thor knew he knew that he was there. He did nothing, just stood several feet from him and waited for him to acknowledge his presence.

The sun was warm overhead. Loki made a little sigh and opened his eyes. He didn’t react to Thor’s presence, neither smiling nor snapping at him. 

“You knew before I did,” he said calmly. 

Thor looked away. “I knew something,” he allowed. 

Silence fell. Neither of them would look at each other. 

“How did you know?” Loki asked, eyes on the patch of grass by Thor’s boot.

“I don’t know.” His eyes were fixed on the same spot. “I just did.”

_“I_ didn’t know,” Loki said. There was something ugly in his tone. “And I should have.” He looked back up at Thor. “How could I just not know?” he asked.

Thor didn’t reply directly. “Is your arm hurting you?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

Loki didn’t acknowledge the apology, just looked away, giving Thor his profile. His jaw was set. 

Thor thought about turning around and going away—to the stables, to the armory, the library, anywhere that wasn’t there—but just as he was thinking those things, Loki shifted and almost imperceptibly opened up his posture. Arms more relaxed, legs slightly apart. He still wouldn’t look at him. 

He said something that Thor couldn’t quite catch. 

“Loki?”

Loki finally met his eyes. “You know what I said.”

“No, I don’t.”

But he did, in a way. 

Slowly, giving Loki ample enough time to run if he liked, Thor stepped forward until he was directly in front of him. Then he knelt between his legs. Loki didn’t move, barely registered any emotion at all. 

Thor reached a hand up to his face but put it down again. He swallowed.

“Help me.”

With a little sigh of exasperation, Loki said, “Must I do everything?”

With no further preamble, he pulled Thor forward and pressed his lips against his.

It was gentler than Loki had perhaps intended, and slower too; despite himself, Thor let himself linger there, kneeling in front of him, pressing him into the trunk of the tree. Loki sighed against his mouth. 

He pulled back, and Loki chased the kiss with an indiscreet eagerness. They were both debasing themselves, Thor thought. He put his hands on Loki’s shoulders to hold him back.

“If someone sees—“

“They won’t.” Loki said it with such assurance that Thor believed him; perhaps he had put some sort of glamour in place. 

Remarkable, how doing one bad thing immediately dulled one’s feelings to anything worse. Desensitization. That was the word for it. 

Thor kissed him again. 

 

In Loki’s chamber, on his tangled and untidy bed, they tumbled in a heap, and Thor shoved a hand between their mouths. He was on his back, and Loki kneeling over him, straddling him. 

“There won’t be any going back.” Thor’s voice was heavy with warning.

“As if we could go back before.”

“I mean it, Loki. We can’t—“ He looked around the room, looked at his brother. One of his hands left a deep valley in the pillow beside Thor’s head, and Thor wondered how he could possibly explain to him that he felt as though they were selling their souls for something ultimately not worth the price.

“We can’t,” he finished helplessly. His own hand, which he had used to break the earlier kiss, drifted down to Loki’s chest. He could feel his heart pounding. The sensation of blood pulsing beneath his fingers was profoundly intimate. 

He saw Loki’s throat bob, and somehow the motion took away the last of his reason.

“Just—just be gentle.”

Loki nodded and pushed him back against the bed again.

 

He wasn’t gentle, of course, and Thor felt as though Loki had ripped years off his life afterward as they lay curled around each other, hands tangled together. Loki was asleep. 

He thought of their childhood together, and of how Sif and Fandral would play with them, too. And then they had grown up, and somehow all the innocence had been soaked up by the run of years, until now, now, now, with them lying naked on Loki’s bed, the sheets body-warm and soiled. Now, with the purple-red marks of teeth on Loki’s chest and Thor’s neck, the still-horrific bruises on Loki’s arm and now on his thighs. They had mauled each other. 

Carefully, so as not to wake him, Thor laced his fingers with Loki’s and pretended he didn’t feel the rise of warmth in his chest when Loki nestled closer to him. 

 

When he awoke again, he was alone on the bed, and Loki was standing before the mirror on the far wall, a robe wrapped around himself. He had uncovered the mirror and was gazing at his reflection with an expression so raw and disgusted that Thor felt the only thing he could do was close his eyes and pretend that he had not seen. 

 

IV.

Within weeks, the rest of the court marveled at how seamlessly the princes had resolved their feud. They were as close as they had ever been, friends observed to the king and queen. As close as when they were boys.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up on tumblr @williamshakennotstirred. 
> 
> Comments are fecking amazing.


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